


to be human

by TolkienGirl



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Humanity, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 15:45:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11466666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Without your heart, your hands are nothing.





	to be human

Humanity’s myth calls Diana by that name and another; Artemis. They call her a huntress, and they fit her out with silver and loneliness and the moon.

It is not enough.

 

_Who are we, mother?_

_Don’t you know? We are protectors._

And she had looked around her, questioning. _But we are already safe! Isn’t there more?_

_Not for you._

It is not enough.

 

Diana finds love in the water, where the pressure opens smoothly between her fingertips, where she has learned to hold her breath, where the man—yes, this is a man—is falling.

 

Diana finds love, and the world, and she loses both of them so that she can save them. It is the way of things, the way of the water, the way of her heart, opening between centuries.

She will save the same world over and over. Until _enough_ is no longer what she asks of it.

 

_Do not tell me a myth or a legend. What use have we of stories? I want to learn._

_But stories come from the heart_ , Antiope says. Antiope’s cheeks are damp with sweat, but she is singing as they fight. Diana thinks it wastes time.

_I want to learn._

_Then learn this: without your heart, your hands are nothing._

The human world grows around her. And like all things that grow, it comes with both beauty and pain. Like all things that are beautiful, she knows that it cannot last, but she knows that she must also love it.

There is so much in it to love.

 

That day, when the plane goes up (and he does not come down), her world ends and begins again. The sky goes light as pain and dark as death, all in the same moment, all in the same string of memories. It feels like the future and it feels like if she only calls his name, he will not leave her.

 

Antiope died for her, and Steve died for her, and Diana lives for them and for everyone.

 

They win the war. It feels like too many losses. It is better to look at the eyes of the children, no longer afraid. It is better to hold close those who lived. They are victories, but they do not belong to the war.

Diana is no huntress. Diana is a warrior; they do not chase down a prize. They chase down a war, and keep it at bay, so that the eyes of the children need never know it.

 

The world turns glass and steel; the world turns marble. The world turns cruel, the world turns bloody, but she has seen it all before.

In all of this she learns. She learns; she fights. Sometimes she sings, and sometimes she is silent, and always she is more than they deserve—but not more than they need. (It is enough.)

And she carries Steve’s love like a myth, like a legend, like something she can name.

Because without his heart, her hands are nothing.


End file.
